Why Spotify’s New Policy on Hateful Conduct Is a Flawed Step Forward

Yesterday, Spotify announced a new policy that is acutely aware of the times. In addition to music that promotes hateful messages, the streaming service will now keep musicians accused of “hateful conduct” from being promoted via playlists made by both the company’s curators and its algorithms. But exactly what, and who, that entails remains murky.

When the initiative was rolled out with a Billboard story, the focus was on R. Kelly’s removal from Spotify-curated playlists—but not the service overall—following an intense bout of new and resurfaced allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse against the singer. As the news spread, it surfaced that XXXtentacion, the Florida rapper facing a bevy of charges including aggravated battery of a pregnant woman and witness tampering, also had been removed from playlists, including hip-hop tastemaker RapCaviar. But listeners can still find rappers like Famous Dex, who was caught on camera assaulting his girlfriend, and YoungBoy Never Broke Again, who was charged with attempted murder in 2016 and arrested this year for kidnapping, assault, and weapons violations on that same playlist, which currently boasts nearly 10 million followers.

Spotify determines which artists break its hateful conduct and hate content policies on an individual basis, through a combination of internal monitoring, user feedback, and consultation with advocacy groups including the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, Color of Change, Showing Up for Racial Justice, GLAAD, Muslim Advocates, and the International Network Against Cyber Hate. Detailing the hateful conduct ban in the initial announcement, Spotify’s head of content and marketplace policy said it would focus on artists who have “done something so particularly out of line with [Spotify’s] values, egregious in a way that it becomes something that [they] don’t want to associate ourselves with.” In a follow-up statement yesterday afternoon, a Spotify rep told the New York Times, “As you can imagine this is a complicated process with room for debate and disagreement, so we can’t get into an artist-by-artist discussion. In general we work with our partners and try to make decisions on a case-by-case basis.”

The confusion over where Spotify draws the line led a publicist for XXXtentacion to ask, in lieu of a comment, if Spotify will remove other stars accused of sexual misconduct, violence, and Nazi ties over the years, ranging from Dr. Dre to Jimmy Page to Michael Jackson to Real Estate. Though questionable in its implicit defense of XXX, the publicist’s point illustrates the problem with announcing a far-reaching policy that is too complicated for hard-and-fast guidelines. While it’s incredibly heartening to see a company using its ubiquity to influence radical, positive change (or even just necessary conversation), the lack of criteria outlined practically baits those who insist on debasing #MeToo as a witch hunt.

Between the foggy specifics and the focus on the industry’s two most controversial alleged abusers right now, Spotify’s announcement makes it seem like the ban will center around those in the news—the allegations that outrage the public. How is that fair to the women with just as serious but not so prominent allegations, involving less commercially successful artists? Also, does Spotify take actual convictions much more seriously than allegations? And at what point, like in R. Kelly’s case, does the public mass of victims outweigh a court’s ruling? Worth considering as well are the racial biases that make artists of color far more vulnerable to arrests and convictions.

Then there’s the matter that XXX’s rep raised, as much as it pains me to give someone who would work for that guy credit. What about infamous cases from the past? Essentially, what is the statute of limitations on Spotify’s mute button? The reality is, the amount of key figures throughout music history who could qualify as having “hateful conduct” at some point is staggering and, as societal norms shift, ever-changing. Carefully parsing all of it would be a project beyond reasonable management for Spotify, and possibly for any single organization.

Through the policy’s sweeping vagueness, Spotify has essentially said, “Trust us.” Trust you? You’re Spotify, the company my favorite artists complain about constantly as the source of their sad, tiny royalty checks. Forgive me if I remain somewhat skeptical of your moral judgement on the whole, even if you have consulted many respectable groups.

To its credit, Spotify has said that this three-pronged, partner-utilizing systems is just the “first iteration of a really comprehensive policy.” But by turning the announcement into a publicity opportunity, instead of just quietly implementing the changes, Spotify has in some ways distracted from the good it is trying to achieve. Though Apple Music has declined to comment officially on such policies, a source familiar with the situation tells Pitchfork that R. Kelly’s music has not been promoted on the service’s featured playlists for the past couple of weeks. That, to me, seems the more conflict-free way to stop promoting artists who, frankly, deserve to be ignored.

As the notion of not promoting abusive artists gains widespread traction for the first time in history, these kinds of debates echo the ones being had in many newsrooms where cultural criticism is produced. The answer often boils down to how you perceive the role of your platform, and in turn what responsibility you believe you have to your audience. So, is a streaming service more akin to an impartial retailer, or does the facade of “curation” lend it a moral clout? The problem is, Spotify is both. It is a source of musical guidance for millions of listeners, in large part due to its playlists, which have a palpable effect on both trends and artist revenue. Many of the people employed to create these playlists are former music journalists, so it makes sense that they would take a more nuanced stance than, “just give the people the tunes they want.” Even commercial radio stations, those lifeless, corporatized bastions of major label “favors,” sometimes take a stance and temporarily suspend controversial artists in the news from their rotations (see: Kanye).

Sit with this fact as well: Spotify is the leading provider within the record industry’s top revenue source—not to mention a company that Sony, which owns the label that releases R. Kelly’s records, has invested in, reportedly controlling 5.7 percent of shares. The larger problem, beyond the unclear policy rollout, is that Spotify is too many things at once. It is the picture of vertical integration posing as a savior within a destabilized industry.

Oronike Odeleye, one of the forces behind the #MuteRKelly boycott that has gained traction since last summer, particularly following a recent Time’s Up cosign, characterized Spotify’s ban as “a wonderful thing that a corporation has decided that they won’t promote [Kelly] anymore.” It absolutely is, and the move likely comes, in part, thanks to Odeleye’s work. Here in late capitalism, our only real power is as consumers, en masse. We need organizing forces like #MuteRKelly. But can a company that is still making money off the person they are protesting ever really play that role?